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TRANSCRIPTION:
Hey everybody, this is Heidi St. John. Welcome to the 800th episode of the Heidi St. John podcast. I’m so glad you guys have joined me. As promised, I’m going to be announcing a giveaway today and my friend Ken Ham is here. He is going to bless and encourage you, and we’re going to be talking about all things worldview and why your view of Genesis matters.
Stick around. I think you’re going to be encouraged.
All right, so you guys, I’m so glad that you here. I’ve asked Ken to come on for the 800th episode of the show. There was nobody better I could think of. This guy knows the Word of God and he’s going to encourage you and exhort you today to just take God at His Word. But before we get started, I want to just encourage you with a couple of things. First of all, we’re going to be doing some giveaways today and I’m going to give you instructions for how you can enter at the end of the podcast. So listen through to the end and I’ll give you instructions for how to participate in the giveaways. We’re going to be giving three packages away and I’m going to add a list of the package goodies to the show notes, so if you want to see what’s in each of those packages, you’re going to need to go to the show notes.
All right, so thanks for tuning in everybody today. I wanted to let you guys know before we get started, I will be in Kansas City, Missouri for my women’s conference Faith that Speaks coming up on the 24th of August, and it’s not too late to get your tickets. We’re expecting about 500 women to show up to that event. I want to just encourage you, bring your Bible, bring your notebooks. We’re going to spend a whole day talking about why the Word of God is so important and why it’s so important that we know it and defend it. This is one of the reasons I love my friend Ken Ham. He is my guest today on Meet My Friend Friday, and I think this is the first time I’ve ever had him on the show. So I’m going to go ahead and introduce him to you. For those of you who aren’t familiar, Ken is the CEO and founder of Answers in Genesis, The Creation Museum, and also the Ark Encounter. Ken Ham, welcome to the podcast.
[Ken] Hey. Hi Heidi. Is that how you say it, Heidi?
[Heidi] Only since the last time you said it.
[Ken] Well I have an Australian accent so it probably comes out different. Sometimes people frown at me at some of the ways I say things.
[Heidi] I remember the last time that we were at the Ark, my son Spencer is talking about going to Australia, and you’re teaching him a little bit of Australian slang. He’s still trying to figure it out because you can talk really fast with your Australian accent, as I recall.
[Ken] Yeah.
[Heidi] That’s exactly what it was. We’re still trying to get some of it down. Spencer’s been talking about going over and visiting the YWAM Base over there. So he feels like you gave him a pretty good introduction to some Australian slang. So what do you call your wife? I remember you were telling me. Bubble and strife or bubbles in…—what did you say?
[Ken] Yea, bubble and strife. Well that’s a rhyming slang. So there’s a whole, there’s this Australian slang, but then there’s a rhyming slang, and the rhyming slang is like— Billy lids of the kids, and the bubble and strife is the wife. Things like that.
[Heidi] I love it.
[Ken] I don’t call my wife that though.
[Heidi] No, that’s actually really smart. That was something that you’ve learned from all these years of marriage, so that’s good though. That’s a good tip for everybody. So you’ve got a really awesome thing going on over at Answers in Genesis. I was just at the Ark Encounter speaking for Answers For Women, which I loved—was a fantastic event. Tell listeners about…I’ve told them a little bit about it, but I think it’s so much more fun hearing it from you. Tell us about the Ark Encounter.
[Ken] Well the Ark Encounter is a world class attraction. In fact, we have two attractions. The Ark Encounter and the Creation Museum. They’re the two leading world-class attractions in the world. The Ark Encounter is actually a life size Noah’s Ark. Over the years, actually goes back to 1975 when I became a public school science teacher. And the kids knew I was a Christian and they said—so how can you believe the Bible? Because evolution is true. Look at our textbooks. And one of the kids said— so Noah couldn’t get the animals on the Ark. And I realized that those questions were a stumbling block to them. And so I started to teach them and answer those questions. And over the years, as I’ve traveled around the world, one of the most asked questions you do get asked concerns the flood. Is there any evidence for the flood? How could Noah fit the animals on the Ark? And of course the whole world, in a sense, is sort of familiar with Noah’s Ark. Because you had these little gift shops all around the world and you have children’s books with giraffes sticking out the chimney.
[Heidi] Yea, like cartoons.
[Ken] Yea, and it’s gonna sink at any moment. And unfortunately a lot of churches have them posted on their kindergarten walls. And when I visit those churches, I almost get arrested for wanting to paint graffiti over them and things like that. One of the big stumbling blocks for people even thinking that you can believe that Genesis is true, is the account of the Ark and the flood because people believe there’s no evidence for it and they believe that the Ark was just too small and that whole account can’t be true. And unfortunately, even many of our Christian books for kids reinforce that. And so, over the years we’ve always tried to, at some vet conferences, give people an idea of the size of the Ark. We use helium balloons to sort of stake it out.
While we’re building the creation museum in 2004, we’re talking about what we could do next because after all, you know, you get a creation museum opened— you can’t just stop there, you gotta do something else.
[Heidi] Well and you were going to have your like, Napoleon moment, right?— where you looked around your like: I’ve conquered this. What are we onto next?
[Ken] Exactly. Yeah, exactly. And so we talked, what if we really built a life size Ark to show people the size of the Ark? And of course, how would you ever do that? And in 2005, even before the creation museum was opened, we said— you know what, let’s do that. Let’s really, seriously move forward with looking at how to build a life size Ark. And we were able to do that. And that’s a long story as to how that happened, that the Lord brought all sorts of people into our lives to enable us to do that. It’s the biggest timber frame structure in the world. It’s one and a half times the length of a football field, half the width of a football field, it’s built 15 feet off the ground, and stands seven stories high, and then 10 stories high at the bow.
And it’s filled with all sorts of exhibits, teaching exhibits, themed exhibits. You walk through all three decks, answering all those most asked questions people have— How could Noah look out to the animals? How could he fit them on board? What would the defense to train a kind and a species? The land animals, what did they look like and how could he feed them? How could he get rid of the waste? And what about the Ice Age after the flood? And what about people coming off the Ark and then the terror of Able? I mean, we deal with all those sorts of topics.
The Creation Museum is different in that it’s a walkthrough of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation. Noah’s Ark, the Ark Encounter, is more emphasizing the aspects of the teaching about the flood, and the fossils, and the animals. And we actually have a zoo behind the arch as well. You spoke in our 2,500 seat multipurpose center, and we just opened a big family playground for kids. So it’s an incredible family friendly place. It has zip lines that go across the valley and it’s just a place to come and have fun, learn about God’s Word, learn the answers to those questions. We have one of the biggest restaurants in America. It’s called EmZara Buffet and seats 1700 people. And we feed thousands of people a day.
[Heidi] You can gain a lot of weight in there. I learned that in my two full days at the Ark Encounter. I ate there a lot. I think I gained 10 pounds.
[Ken] Genesis 1:30 food. And we also have Genesis 9:3 food.
[Heidi] What’s the difference?
[Ken] Genesis 1:29-30, Genesis 1:29, I should say. That’s where Adam and Eve were told they could eat fruit. And verse 30, as the animals we were told, you know, it was said they eat plants. But in Genesis 9:3 after the flood, God changed our diet. And he said, now you can eat everything. So you see we have salads and we have everything. So it’s really a Genesis 9:3 but if you want to stick to Genesis 1:29, that’s okay.
[Heidi] Well, I gotta tell you, we took the kids that Jay and I still have at home, I think we had four of our kids with us. If you gave them the choice between going into the Creation Museum and the Ark Encounter, they’d pick the Ark Encounter. It really is astonishing. When I first saw it— I mean, you and I have been talking about this for years, but I hadn’t been to it yet— and when we first drove over the hill and could kinda catch a glimpse of it for the first time, it takes your breath away how big it is. And then you see— no wonder people thought Noah was crazy. It is ginormous, right? This huge Ark. And then you go into it and you guys have done as spectacular job of answering the questions that people ask about the flood and about the Ark. One of the big questions that we always get, you know we hear when I’m out talking about six literal days of creation and talking about the Ark and people will say— well how did he get those big animals onto the Ark? You have answered it really beautifully, but for the listeners, can you just give a really quick synopsis of how it’s explained? How no one was able to do that?
[Ken] Well, first of all, we need to understand that God made kinds of land animals after their kind, or according to their kind. We read that in Genesis 1. And Genesis 6 says two of every kind, seven pairs of some, but of each kind went to a board and I was up. So the first thing we do is explain what a kind is, because you know, when I debated Bill Nye five years ago, Bill Nye mocked at me for believing Noah’s Ark because he said you couldn’t fit the millions of species on board. Well the Bible doesn’t use the word species, and we have a classification system. And we would say that the word kind is actually translated from the Hebrew word. And it would be more at the family level of classification. And so when you look at, for instance, dogs, all different dogs space about 34 different dog species and then all of varieties of our modern dogs, they’re all interconnected. In other words, they can all interbreed and the road interconnected in a way. So there’s only one kind of dog. And by the way it’s called dog. And so only two dogs were needed on the Ark and they didn’t necessarily have to be big dogs or really small dogs. I mean the dogs God made originally would have had the genetic diversity that God put in them, so that different combinations of genes can result in different characteristics. You know, you could get dogs that have combinations of genes having long hair or short hair or medium hair or being bigger dogs or smaller dogs. It could have been that the two dogs that went on Noah’s Ark weren’t really that big, yet they could have offspring bigger than them, just depending on what genes that they inherited. And over time, after the flood, as the numbers increase and they move away from each other, you end up forming different species of dogs. But he only needed two on the Ark.
So when you go through and work out that two of each family, in most instances we needed on the Ark, seven pairs of some— there were far fewer animals needed on the Ark than most people realize, and we would say at the most about 1,400 kinds, but probably less than a thousand kinds —because there are some species today like bats, we believe all bats are the one kind, but we’ve never documented them all. So we allow them to be separate kinds for the sake of argument. But when you start looking at it all, we would say far fewer animals than people realize. And you know for the, for the really big ones, maybe like the Sauropod, when they’re hatched out of eggs they were small, and I’m not saying babies went on the Ark, but it would make sense that that young adults would have gone on the Ark.
And it’s very possible before the flood, you didn’t have the extremes in variation that you see today. Because after the flood, we believe that because of the flood, the continents were split up. There’s probably one continent before the flood. And so now as animals move away and get to different places, you can get different extremes that are represented because of the genetic diversity that before the flood, they would have been much more mixing and you might have had some of those extremes anyway. So there’s a lot of things that you can look at, and we answer all those questions in the Ark and various exhibits to say— see Noah didn’t need anywhere near the number of animals on the Ark. Do you think he could easily fit them on board? And the average size of a land animal is really not that big when you look at the average. So there was plenty of room on the Ark.
[Heidi] Well, it’s an incredible exhibit. As you walk through, I just watched my kids faces light up. You guys have done a great job of making the Ark Encounter and The Creation Museum very family friendly. And you and I have this, we share a passion for teaching children from a biblical perspective, a Biblical worldview. Why is it so important for parents? There are a lot of parents listening to this today and we get questions all the time about why homeschooling, why Christian education? Why is a biblical worldview important? Why is it important for parents to impart a biblical worldview to their children? Why is this so important?
[Ken] Well, Heidi, if you look at the world today— I mean, look at the culture that we live in. I liken it to a tornado. There’s a tornado raging around us and you think of all the issues that confront us today, whether they’re the issues of gender, transgender, and gay marriage, and euthanasia. And then there’s even more and more of pedophilia. And then there’s polygamy and polyamory. And so it goes on and you know, our kids are growing up hearing those sorts of terms, which I never heard as a kid actually. It’s a different sort of culture. And so think about this. It’s like a tornado raging around them and they can be so easily, as the Bible says, tossed to and probably wound up doctrine. How do they know what to believe? How do they know what they believe?
Why do they believe what they do and how do they approach these issues? And what about talking to people who would talk to them about those issues? What do they say to them? How do they understand people who don’t believe Christian doctrines like marriage being one man and one woman? When you think about the Ark and The Creation Museum, what we do at these attractions is we’re helping people understand the history in Genesis 1 to Genesis 11. We represent that for instance at The Creation Museum, we walk people through the seven C’s of history from Genesis to Revelation. Creation, Corruption, Catastrophe, Confusion, Christ, Cross, Consummation. But those first four C’s, Creation, Corruption, Catastrophe, Confusion— that’s Genesis 1 to Genesis 11. Genesis 1 to Genesis 11 is the geological, biological, astronomical, anthropological history that’s actually foundational to our doctrine and foundational to our worldview. See, for a lot of people today, they sort of look on in the church, and I think the way it’s taught in a lot of our churches, the Bible is sort of a guidebook to life. It’s sort of a book about spiritual things, moral things, relationships. But the Bible is a book of history and it gives us a history concerning the past, so that when you take that history as real history in Genesis 1 to Genesis 11 — that’s the foundation for the way you think, then when you look at the world today and you see all the death and suffering in there— when you have the right foundation that there was no death originally of animals or man, death is a consequence of our sin, this is a groaning world because of the fall, so this is not the world as God made it, which was very good originally. This is now a fallen world.
And then when you say— oh look, there were fossils all over the earth and they’re in layers, thousands of feet thick, and places in the sedimentary stratum. But if you already know about the flood, and you already know that death came after sin, so the apostles couldn’t have formed before man sinned. And then the Bible says there was a global flood, the catastrophe of Noah’s Day. Then you say, now I know why there are fossils all over the earth. And then when you look at all the people groups and you say— well, how to explain all the differences in these people groups around the world? And notice I didn’t say races, because even the secular world says all humans are one race. But of course, that’s what you’d expect based on the Bible. We’re all descendants of Adam and Eve were the sentence of then the people on Noah’s Ark, the three sons of Noah and their wives. And then because of Able, God gave different languages. And so it was people split up over time depending on who married who, they formed different cultures. And because of the genetic diversity God had inbuilt into the humankind, then you will see specific characteristics in regard to skin, shade, eye shade, beard shade, whatever it is. And you look at those differences today and there are only minor differences, really, reflecting some of the minor genetic diversity. But nonetheless, you understand the different people groups and then you understand the gospel is for every tribe and nation because we will go back to Adam and Eve. And then when you understand that history in Genesis, anthropology for instance, when you understand that God made man in his image, he made him different to the animals, he made man from dust and then he put the man to sleep and made the woman from the man. And that’s the foundation for marriage. Then you realize, that’s why I believe marriage is a man and a woman.
God made the first marriage it’s a God ordained institution. You become one because you one place that history in Genesis, that anthropology is true. And then when you understand that God made man in His image, Genesis 1:27— He made man in His image. You realize, no animal is made in God’s image. Only humans were. So when you get DNA from the mother and from the father, and you get a fertilized egg, you have a unique combination of information from both male and female, but that’s made in God’s image. So then you understand abortion would be killing a human being. You see, if we don’t have that foundation in Genesis, we’re not going to have a Christian worldview. And we’ve got to understand that ultimately there are only two foundations: God’s Word or man’s word. And for secular education, the foundation is man’s word. They have a secular worldview. You can’t just add God to that. To have a truly Christian worldview, you have to start from the revelation from the one who knows everything, who’s rebuilt the key events of history to us to have the right foundation to correctly understand this world.
[Heidi] Yeah, that’s exactly right. And my friend, Bill Jack was on the show with me a couple of weeks ago, and we were talking about the secularization of the culture, starting with the schools. And really even the churches have been secularized.
I read last week that the Lutheran Missouri Senate has taken God’s Word now and said it’s meant to be taken literally. And this is another question I have for you, because I get this all the time from parents. I get many questions from people who are listening to the podcast who are Theistic Evolutionists, right? When, when someone asks you, does it matter if we believe in a literal six days of creation or doesn’t it, what’s your answer?
[Ken] Well, I’d answer that in a number of ways. But the first thing when somebody says to me— does it matter whether the six literal days or not? My first question is this: does it matter if we take God at His Word or not? I mean, because that really is the ultimate issue—an issue of authority. Now, the reason I say that is because when you actually look at it, the reason people don’t believe in six days has nothing to do with what the Bible says. It’s got everything to do with being influenced from the world outside, from particularly the belief in millions of years and somehow trying to fit that into the Bible. You see, people will say to me— well, you know, the word “day” can mean something other than ordinary day. And I’ll say that’s true, but it can also mean an ordinary day.
And so it’s not a matter of whether it can mean something other than ordinary day. It’s a matter of what does the context mean in that particular passage. And if you look at the Hebrew word Yom for day, it is used 2,301 times in the singular approved from in the Old Testament. Here’s the interesting thing. We know what it means everywhere it’s used, except in Genesis 1 we have a problem. We say we don’t know what it means. So is it that Genesis 1 is the problem and it’s because if you believe in six literal days and Adam was made on day six, and you know he had his son Saith when he was 130, and you go through and read all those genealogies, you realize, well wait a minute, that means the whole earth and universe is only about 6,000 years old.
But hey, the world says millions of years and so many Christians want to fit the millions of years into the Bible. The thing is if those days are ordinary days, you can’t get millions of years from the Bible. And I would say they are ordinary days because the Hebrew word Yum, whenever it’s qualified with a number who evening or morning or night— it means an ordinary day. And when you look at Genesis 1, the first day has the number first day and evening, and has morning, and night, and each of the other days have an evening, morning, and number—qualifying the word day. So you look up any Hebrew Lexicon like Brown Driver Briggs or others, they will give you examples of when does the word day men day according to the Hebrew language. Well the first example is Genesis 1:5, the first day of creation. I mean Exodus 20:11 even reiterates that in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth and rested on the seventh.
That’s why we have a seven day a week based on the sixth day of creation and one day of rest right there in Genesis 1. But then I want to add something else. The other thing I’m going to add is this. When you believe in millions of years as a Christian, I’m not saying you’re not a Christian because salvation is conditioned upon faith in Christ, not what you believe about the age of the earth. But if you believe in millions of years, here’s the problem you’ve got. The millions of years came out of atheistic and deistic naturalism of the 17 hundreds and 18 hundreds when people want to explain everything, and particularly the fossil record, without God. And they said those fossils layers were laid down billions years before man. And many Christians have taken that millions of years and try to fit in the days of creation or a gap between the first two verses of Genesis or whatever it is.
But as soon as you have millions of years before man in the fossil record, it’s full of dead things, fossils, and it’s also full of diseases like cancer and abscesses and all sorts of other diseases you see in the bones and the fossil record. But wait a minute, after God created Adam, He said everything was very good. So if you believe in millions years, God calls cancer very good. And one of the big problems are a young people have to die. The younger generations like generation X, Y, Z, — they say: how can there be a loving God? Look at all the death and suffering in the world. It’s one of the big issues atheists bring up all the time. How can you believe in a loving God? Look at all the death and suffering in the world. If you look at the world today and see all that death and suffering, and you say you believe in a million years and told your kids that they know that death and suffering is going on for millions of years and God’s responsible for that?— no wonder that I have struggled with a loving God and a holy God.
But if you’ve taught them the death and struggle you see today is because of man sin, we live in a fallen world because of sin, and that’s why there’s all this death struggle today, and the fossil record — most of that’s actually the graveyard of the flood is not the graveyard of millions of years, then they start to realize it’s our sin that caused this problem. God’s not responsible for it. We are. He stepped into history in the person of His Son to be the God man to save us from what our sin did to this world. Then they start to understand the gospel and they understand that death is the penalty, and understand the holiness of God and understand the habits we reeked in Adam because we rebelled against God. You see, it’s very, very important.
The last thing I want to say, Heidi, is this: When you’ve taught your children that you can add millions of years into the Bible, what you’re really doing is saying— you can take what man has said and add it into the Bible and reinterpret the Bible. You’re actually undermining the authority of the Word of God. Then we wonder why they say— we can take what man says about marriage, that you can have two men or two women, we can reinterpret marriage, we can reinterpret other parts of the Bible— and then they start to doubt you can trust the Bible. There is an incredible exodus from the church. Right now, only 18% of millennials go to church. The greatest generation, those born before 1928, 56% of them went to church. There’s an exodus from the church and it’s really because we haven’t raised up generations boldly to stand on God’s Word, taught them how to defend the faith against all these attacks of today, and because much of the church’s compromise God’s Word in Genesis, they doubt and that leads to unbelief. They walk away from the church. We need to get back to the authority, the Word of God and teach them a truly Christian worldview.
[Heidi] That’s exactly right. I can not keep up with you. I’m writing notes and you’re talking faster than I can write my friend. Listen, one of the things I love about your ministry is that you’re encouraging everyone who’s listening to you to say— listen, God is not silent on the issues that we’re facing today. God addresses them. He addresses the issue of marriage. He addresses the issue of transgenderism. I got a letter just last week from a mom whose son, her 14 year old son came home from public school after being really indoctrinated for two years in a row about transgenderism. One of his friends decided that he was a girl, and so he is beginning the process of transition and she said to me—I’ve read God’s Word, Heidi. It doesn’t address transgenderism, but she’s wrong. It does address it. Ken, how can we know how God feels about the issue of transgenderism? Is that in the Bible?
[Ken] Well, you know, I talked about the fact that Genesis 1 to Genesis 11 is actually the foundational history for the whole of the rest of the Bible, for our Christian worldview, and for all of our doctrines, it is foundational to the gospel because the origin of all the basic entities of life and the universe are in Genesis 1 to Genesis 11. So if people are only taught that Genesis 1 to Genesis 11 as the foundation for their doctrine, they would know how to think correctly about this. When you go to Genesis 1:27, it says that God made man in His image in the image of God He created him. And then it says male and female, He created them. Now the Bible doesn’t say he created male to change into female, or female to change in a mile. He says he created them male and female.
And then when you get to Genesis 2, He tells us the details that He made the male from dust. And the he bought the animals to Adam, the first man, to name. And he saw that he was alone. There was no one like him because no one else was making the image of God. You know, He didn’t look at a female chimp and say she’s close enough or something like that. And remember God made the animals by saying, let the earth bring forth the animals. God didn’t make man like that. He said, let us make man in our image. So God put man to sleep and from his side made the first woman. So a woman came out of the man. Now, it’s interesting, the first recorded words of Adam were— this is bone of my bone flesh of my flesh, she shall be called woman— because she came from the man. Paul 1 Corinthians 11:8 says the woman came from the man. And then in Genesis 2:24, it says: For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh. So the reason for marriage.
Now, in the New Testament in Matthew 19 and Mark 10 when Jesus is asked about marriage, he says— haven’t you read? He made them in the beginning, made them male and female. And it’s the whole basis for marriage. So the created order is God made humans, male and female. And genetically we know that’s true. When you have the XX and XY chromosome we know that’s true. There’s male and female. And you know, with this whole transgender movement, when they want to say they want to change from one or the other, they have to do horrible surgeries to remove physical structures and so on. They have to try to overcome hormones, and add other hormones, and try to change one into something that one is not genetically determined to be.
But see, so here’s the issue. God made male and female, but there’s one aspect to this that we need to teach our children. Sin has distorted the world. Sin changes everything. What that will bring up is this: The secularists will say— oh yeah, but you know, you can say male and female, but there were exceptions. But when you look at the exceptions, they are less than 1% because we do have people who have genetic problems, necause of sin. And so there are mistakes. They are copying mistakes, there are mutations. In fact, there are all sorts of diseases and deformities and problems that people can have because of sin. So we need to explain to our children— look, they’re going to try to tell you there are exceptions and use that to negate the rule and negate the created order. But the Bible gives us the foundation as to why there are these so-called exceptions. There’s problems because of sin. And there are very small percentage, but they’re there because of sin and those sort of people net our love and so on. But the bottom line is the created order is God made male and female and the science of genetics confirms it. So that should be the way we should teach our children.
[Heidi] Yeah. And we’re really denying science and the culture right now. I find this quite amusing because for so long we had the so-called scientists and the people who are promoting evolution to our children, and now they’re teaching our children that you can change your gender—that men can become women. Even little children understand that’s intrinsically wrong. And it sort of brings me to my next question for you, because we talk a lot on the show about education and the importance of education. And the Bible teaches us in Luke 6:40, that when a student is fully trained, he’ll be like his teacher. And we know that what we teach our children has implications for generations to come. And we’re watching the public schools really making a grab for children, right? We’re seeing this in the libraries through drag queen story hour, which I’ve been fighting tooth and nail in my neck of the woods. Talk to parents who drop their kids off in public school and they think— well, it’s just reading, writing, and arithmetic. Is there such a thing as a neutral education?
[Ken] Well, let’s look at what the Bible says. Okay? First of all, when you start in Genesis, God comes to Adam and says— Adam, don’t eat the fruit of the tree. So what’s God saying? Obey My Word. Obey God’s Word. And then the Devil comes to Eve and says— did God really say? You don’t have to obey His Word. You can become like God. You can be your own God. In other words, trust man’s word. And so a battle began between two foundations, between two religions, right? Because ultimately there’s only two: God’s Word and man’s word. Now look through the whole of Scripture. What Scripture portray that battle as: light and darkness, build your house on the rock or on the sand, those who gathered those who scattered, those who are for Christ those who are against, those who trust the fountain of living waters those who trust the systems of man, it begins with the tree of life the tree of death, which is a tree of knowledge of good and evil. And so all the way through Scripture, what do you see? There’s no neutrality.
You’re either for Christ or against. You either walk in light or darkness. You are the gatherer or the scatterer. There’s no neutral position. And see that’s been a problem with the church. We’ve got this idea— oh they took Bible creation prayer out of the public schools. They took religion out. No, they did not. They took Christianity out and they replaced it with the religion of atheism. See, atheism is a religion. Atheist claim— oh no, we’re just neutral because we have a non belief. No, you don’t have a non belief. You have a belief. You believe there’s no God. You believe life arose by natural processes. You believe that the laws of nature all arose by natural processes. You believe when you die, that’s the end. And there’s nothing more. And you see, when you look at the public school education system, what is the foundation for their worldview? The foundation is: man determines truth. It’s naturalism. What is naturalism? Because they explained, look at the textbooks—you can explain the whole of reality without God. That’s naturalism. That’s atheism.
So really, public schools by and large have become churches of atheism. That’s what they are. And many of the teachers are the high priests of atheism. We’ve got to understand when our kids go to an education system where they don’t have the Bible, that’s not neutral. Because if you’re not for Christ, you’re against. So if the education system is not for Christ, it is against. And you know, when you look at it from the biblical perspective, the Bible says that we are to be salt, the salt of the earth, but it also says have salt in you. And if the salt contaminated is good for nothing. When our children are born, the Bible says they have a conscience because God gave Him that. But they don’t know about Adam and Eve, and they don’t know about the flood, and they didn’t know about the origin of death, and they don’t know about God creating marriage and so on. Our job as parents is to put that salt in them. They can’t be salt till they have salt. And if the salt is contaminated, then it is as good for nothing. And so we’ve got to remember that.
Sometimes parents get the idea that our kids need to be in the public school to witness to the other kids. And I say to them— be careful you’re not sacrificing your kids because most kids do not survive the public education system and the majority of of church kids do not. And statistics bear that out. You can’t deny that. And the thing is we should be building them up with the salt of God’s Word. Teaching them apologetics, teach them to defend their faith, give them a whole Christian worldview so they know what they believe. So their whole worldview is anchored in God’s Word. So this tornado of moral relativism that’s raging around us, they’re not going to be ripped apart by that. Instead, they’ll know what they believe, why they believe what they do. And then as they are filled with salt, and know what they believe and why they believe what they do, they will be able to go out and then be witnesses to the world.
[Heidi] Yeah, that’s right. I know there’s going to be a mom or dad listening to this right now and they’ve got maybe a 13 or 14 year old child at home, and this mom’s thinking to herself— I haven’t been doing that. I have not been teaching my children from a biblical worldview. They don’t know God’s Word. They can’t defend it because I don’t know His Word and I can’t defend it. How do we encourage parents? Where can we encourage parents who are in that scenario to start training their children to have a biblical worldview to understand the Bible?
[Ken] There’s lots of ways we can answer that. And then I’ll answer it from an Answers in Genesis perspective and I’m sure you can answer it as well from lots of other areas too. But the first thing they need to understand is studying the Bible is not just 9-10 on Mondays through Fridays. If we really understand what it means to have a Christian worldview, that the Bible then is the foundation for our entire worldview in every area, that’s the important thing to understand. And what we also need to be looking at is this— the Bible actually warns us. In 2 Corinthians 11:3, Paul has a warning for us. He says, beware lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.
In other words, the warning is that the Devil is going to use the same method on you, and on your kids, and on your grandkids, on your neighbors, on your friends. He’s going to use the same method on you and your kids as he did on Eve to get you to position to not believe the Bible or not believe in God. And what was that method? Go back to Genesis 3:1, the Devil came to Eve and said— did God really say? Otherwords, the first attack was on the authority of the Word of God. And thenë you can become like God, you decide truth for yourself. And so that should be a warning to us that we need to be teaching our kids the foundation that God is a creator, He owns us. He’s the one that sets the rules. He’s the one that determines right and wrong. Because if you don’t have that foundation, then you become your own God. And that’s really what’s happened in the culture. We’ve had generations of kids come through an education system where they really been told man determines truth, you are your own God. And so we need to deal with that.
Secondly, we need to look at the other part there—did God really say? I call it the Genesis 3 Attack. What does the Devil use in our time to try to get people to doubt and not believe the Word of God? And you know it’s interesting, Peter and Paul didn’t have to deal with carbon dating. We do. It wasn’t an issue in their day. Martin Luther didn’t have to talk about dinosaurs because the Word wasn’t even invented until 1841 and he was back in the 16th century.
So what, what is it today? And one of the things we noticed today when I say to any audience— how many of you have heard these sorts of statements or questions? But we live in a scientific age. Science has disproved the Bible. The Bible is a book of mythology. Where did Cain get his wife? How did Noah get the animals on the Ark? And what about carbon dating? Didn’t dinosaurs lived millions of years ago? Didn’t way come from Ape-Men? Hasn’t evolution been proven? They all put their hands up anywhere in the world, in fact, because they’re the issues to die that have been leveled at our kids that caused them to doubt the Bible. And so we need to be saying, I’ve got to prepare them and make sure they know what they believe, that they prepared with answers to defend the Christian faith against the attacks of our day so that they won’t be led astray.
And you know, that’s why we produce apologetics curricula. We produce apologetics books, giving answers to the most asked questions today. We have a four year Bible curriculum that’s apologetics, biblical authority, chronological in the way it’s actually produced so that it gives you a whole perspective foundationally of the Bible and prepares you for those attacks that people are gonna make on God’s Word. I mean, that’s the sort of thing that we need to be doing. And then when it comes to talking about science and talking about history, recognizing again that we’ve got to have a curriculum that starts with God’s Word in Genesis 1 to Genesis 11. Because take biology, you’ve got to understand God made kinds according to their kind. That gives you a basis for understanding how you can have different kinds of animals and yet have great variation within a kind. Different species and to teach them that that’s not evolution. We need to be looking at what the world is teaching. We need to make sure our kids know more about evolution than the evolutionist because the more they know about it, the more they’ll understand why it’s wrong—and we need to teach them that way. But we need to teach them the right foundation from God’s Word at the same time. And so there’s a lot to it, but that’s why the Lord has raised up ministries like Answers in Genesis and what you’re doing. And there’s lots of others out there too to get people back to the foundation of God’s Word and to raise up generations who have a truly Christian world.
[Heidi] Yeah. And parents need to understand this isn’t going to happen on its own. Our kids are not going to get faith from us by osmosis. We really have to teach them. And that’s why I love so much of what you’re doing and Answers in Genesis. You’re giving parents not just a place where they can take their families and show them— hey, this is what God’s Word says and this is why we know it’s true—you’re going beyond that. They have curricula, they have books. One of my favorite books that you put out a long time ago was called Already Gone. And I read that one side and down the other. And I think that you and I talked about this last time I saw you that my takeaway from it, as I got sorted to the end of that book, I thought— you know what? You don’t just lose a generation of children. You lose a generation of parents, you lose a generation of grandparents, people who no longer feel the value and importance of teaching their children from a biblical worldview, then you lose a generation of children.
And I know you and I have been witnessing this. The last thing that we saw, and I’ll just touch on this briefly in the few minutes that we have left here, is a lot of people listening to this day are very disillusioned because we heard recently on the news that Josh Harris is leaving his wife and then a few days later, predictably, he said he doesn’t consider himself to be a Christian. And I immediately started getting emails from parents saying— how can I prevent this from happening to my own kids? This guy wrote a book called I kissed dating goodbye. So surely he’s safe if his parents trained him up that way. What do say to those parents who are feeling disillusioned and frustrated by what’s happening plain out in realtime, to someone that they really looked up to? Who claimed the name of Jesus?
[Ken] Well, first of all Heidi, Scripture over and over reminds us— put your trust in God, not in man. And we got to remember that all humans are sinful creatures. All fallible. And in some ways it is good. I’d rather kids have really great Christian people as heroes, rather than these Hollywood pagan actors and so on. But at the same time, every human being has feet of clay. We got to remember that. And so that’s what we should always teach our children. First of all, always put your trust in God. People will let you down because they are sinful people, but put your trust in God and always judge what they’re doing against God’s Word.
The interesting thing I notice about Joshua Harris— I mean I’ve watched his Ted Talk where he talked about that he was wrong and all the rest of it and what he wrote and so on. But you know it was to a secular audience, but still not one mention of God’s Word in there. And when I speak to secular audiences, right up front— I’m a Christian, I start with God’s Word. This is why I believe what I do. And I saw missing a foundation from God’s Word and therefore — what’s right and what’s wrong? See, the culture has changed. I mean, he changed his views about LGBTQ. Well, I got news for Joshua Harris. God’s Word has not changed. God made them male and female. The whole doctrine of marriage is founded in Genesis.
But then again, if you start looking at Joshua Harris, it’s very obvious he believed in evolution, millions of years. I mean, when you sort of accommodated man’s ideas to the Bible, it sort of undermines the authority of the Word. It opens it up to undermine the rest. And when you say— well, maybe God used evolution— well, theistic evolution is only one step away from atheistic evolution. And that’s really where it’s at. So it’s a reminder to make sure our kids don’t just add the Bible to their thinking. They really understand that it is the absolute authority, the revelation for the one who knows everything and we need to make sure they get that as their foundation so they realize when the culture changes, my world view isn’t going to change because God’s Word never changes. Always put your trust in God and train them up to defend their faith against the attacks of evolution, millions of years, that caused them to doubt God’s Word. That’s what we need to be doing.
[Heidi] Yeah, that’s right. Isaiah 40:8 says that the grass will wither and the flower fade, but the Word of God will stand forever. And I think this has been a cautionary tale to us that we cannot put our trust and our hope in any human being. You’re right, absolutely fallible. Our feet are made of clay and God’s Word is very clear. One other question for you and before I let you go. A lot of people listening to this, they’re down in Florida or they’re in my neck of the woods. I’m over in Washington state. What’s the best time of year to come to visit the Ark? I think it’s now. I think it’s right now, I’m getting on a train.
[Ken] Yeah, exactly. Yeah. You know what? Different times of the year have different things.
[Heidi] Because you do a really cool Christmas thing there. You should tell everybody about it because they got enough time to plan for that. You guys make an ice skating rink, right? You do the whole thing.
[Ken] Well we do. We have Christmas lights at The Creation Museum. We have a live Nativity and spectacular garden lights. I think it’d be hard to find any way to have such a light display. And of course, we also do lots of other things. Now at the Ark Encounter, we’re going to have concerts, a special of traditional Christmas carols were we are singing. We have a group called Southern Salvation who are with us full time now—they’ll be doing the special concert and they do a special kids concert. We have a widescreen video. We have a 70 foot by 22 foot LED screen that you’ve seen actually. And we’ll be finding this special animated Christmas.
[Ken] Everything’s so small with you. You just need to start thinking big. Think outside the box, start thinking outside the box. Think outside the Ark.
[Heidi] Exactly. And then you can see, you can come and also be on there. We have the biggest, synthetic, ice rink in America. It’s called Glice® Skating Rink. And we have that there as well. So there’s all sorts of things for Christmas. But, you know, January and February are winter months and we don’t close the Ark or The Creation Museum. We’re closed on Sundays and Mondays, but that there is a low time a year and too cold walk much outside. But when you come the rest of the year, there are beautiful gardens and there’s different things, different times a year, Christmas programs that start the day after Thanksgiving right through to the end of the year. So anytime it’s a spectacular time to come, it’s beautiful.
[Heidi] And where are you guys are located in Kentucky?
[Ken] The Ark is south of Cincinnati, so we’re right on interstate 75. It’s called Williamstown, but we’re really right on the interstate, interstate 75 in northern Kentucky. It’s about 40 minutes south of Cincinnati, about 30 minutes south of Cincinnati Airport, which is in Kentucky. That confuses people. But Cincinnati Airport is actually in Northern Kentucky. The Creation Museum is 10 minutes from the airport.
[Heidi] Well, it’s spectacular. I’ve been to both of them a couple of times now and like, I’m not even kidding, if you ask my kids: where would you rather go? They can go to Disneyland or the Ark, they’ll pick the Ark every single time. It’s amazing to see what happens when their eyes light up and they go— oh my goodness, this is real. It’s solidifies what God says is His Word. It really brings it to life.
Ken, I am so thankful for your ministry and thankful for your voice and it’s been a joy. Did you know your the 800th episode here at the podcast. Did you know that?
[Ken] I heard you say that before and I thought that is really special.
[Heidi] It is. I’ve been like— hey dude, my friend Ken’s going to come on here and I’m going to ask him why he doesn’t have any vision. But then I decided maybe I shouldn’t ask you that.
[Ken] I thought you chose the 800 because you thought I was 800 years old.
[Heidi] No, but you know what? I’ll have to think on that. I’ll see which episode you come on next and maybe we can make some sort of a joke about it before then. Ken Ham, I appreciate you coming on. So much for more information, people can find you at AnswersInGenesis.org, right?
[Ken] AnswersInGenesis.org is our main website and if they want to go direct to the Ark Encounter website, just type in Ark Encounter and they’ll find it.
[Heidi] That’s fantastic. Hey Ken, thank you so much for coming on. I really appreciate your voice and your defense of the Word of God. It matters.
[Ken] Heidi, thank you. It was great to be with you.
[Heidi] Well more information on Ken Ham and his ministry. You can visit him at AnswersInGenesis.org.
All right. In celebration of podcast number 800—moment of silence. We are giving away three gift bundles. You guys are going to love to see what’s in these bundles, and here’s some good news for you. You can enter to win each one of them so you can enter in all three places. So the first place you want to go is Instagram. So give a shout out to the podcast, be sure to tag me at @HeidiStJohn, and then each unique shout out, or story, or a post will count as an entry. So you guys have from today until next Friday, August 9th. So go ahead and start tagging and I will announce the winner on Instagram. The next place you can look is iTunes. Go ahead and search for The Busy Mom and then leave a review. If you’ve already left a reviewed, no problem. Take a screenshot of it and share it on Instagram. So you’ve got all week for this one as well. We were going to announce those winners today, but we decided we’re going to give you guys a week.
So finally, MomStrong International. If you’re not a member over there, so not only have we reached a milestone with the podcast, we’ve just topped 13,000 members over at MomStrong International. So now these are three places where you guys can enter to win the bundles. All right, go to MomStrongInternational.com. Create your free account or just log in. If you already have one, click on the chat room and then type in your reply to the question that’s marked #800 giveaway. And it’s as simple as that.
Remember, submissions are open through next Friday, August 9th. Jay and I have been so thrilled to see the Lord grow the podcast and I’m so thankful for what He’s doing in your life. Jay is going to come on with me on Monday and we’re going to do a little bit of a walk through memory lane about the podcast and some of the highlights, some of the most listened to shows. I bet you guys can imagine what they are and we’re going to touch on those on Monday.
You guys have a fantastic weekend. Stay faithful. I’ll see you back here on Monday.
